For the proposition ‘Socrates was the master of Plato and fought at Delium,’ compounded out of the two premises, is obviously nothing more than a grammatical abbreviation. No one can say that there is here any change of meaning, or any thing beyond a verbal modification of the original form. The next step is, ‘The master of Plato fought at Delium,’ which is the previous statement cut down by the omission of Socrates. It contents itself with reproducing a part of the meaning, or saying less than had been previously said. The full equivalent of the affirmation is, ‘The master of Plato fought at Delium, and the master of Plato was Socrates:’ the new form omits the last piece of information, and gives only the first. Now, we never consider that we have made a real inference, a step in advance, when we repeat less than we are entitled to say, or drop from a complex statement some portion not desired at the moment. Such an operation keeps strictly within the domain of equivalence, or Immediate Inference.

In no way, therefore, can a syllogism with two singular premises be viewed as a genuine syllogistic or deductive inference.” (Logic, i., 159.) The first argument, as will have been seen, rests upon the supposition that the name Socrates has a meaning; that man, wise, and poor, are parts of this meaning; and that by predicating them of Socrates we convey no information; a view of the signification of names which, for reasons already given (Note to § 4 of the chapter on Definition, supra, pp. 110, 111.), I can not admit, and which, as applied to the class of names which Socrates belongs to, is at war with Mr. Bain’s own definition of a Proper Name (i., 148), “a single meaningless mark or designation appropriated to the thing.” Such names, Mr. Bain proceeded to say, do not necessarily indicate even human beings: much less then does the name Socrates include the meaning of wise or poor. Otherwise it would follow that if Socrates had grown rich, or had lost his mental faculties by illness, he would no longer have been called Socrates. The second part of Mr. Bain’s argument, in which he contends that even when the premises convey real information, the conclusion is merely the premises with a part left out, is applicable, if at all, as much to universal propositions as to singular. In every syllogism the conclusion contains less than is asserted in the two premises taken together.

Suppose the syllogism to be All bees are intelligent, All bees are insects, therefore Some insects are intelligent: one might use the same liberty taken by Mr. Bain, of joining together the two premises as if they were one—“All bees are insects and intelligent”—and might say that in omitting the middle term bees we make no real inference, but merely reproduce part of what had been previously said. Mr. Bain’s is really an objection to the syllogism itself, or at all events to the third figure: it has no special applicability to singular propositions.